Public deserves truth on judge Judge Ed Ward's forced retirement from the Hillsborough Circuit bench is a fitting end to a competent career ruined by suggestive advances he made to colleagues and subordinates. Tom MacDonald, counsel to the state Judicial Qualifications Commission, deserves credit for his firm but fair handling of the case. The job, however, is only partly finished.

One party, one voice The insurance commissioner's GOP primary could have been a meaningful race. Now with Tom Gallagher out, Republican moderates have no voice.

PerspectiveTaking jobs, alienating customers For weeks Americans have been told that the outsourcing of high-tech jobs is good for our economy. So said Greg Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers in a recent report signed by President Bush. So, too, writes Thomas Friedman of the New York Times in articles praising the rise of call centers in India used for everything from making airline reservations and reading medical X-ray films to providing tech support for American computer firms.

Philip Gailey: Democrats fall off campaign finance reform wagon Well, what do you know. Soft money is back, and it's making hypocrites of all those Democrats who fervently championed the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law, not to mention those Republicans who objected to the law's restrictions on issue advocacy.

Bill Maxwell: Who is for the farm worker? Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is touting legislation to improve the lives of Florida's 300,000-plus farm workers, who endure institutional and systemic injustices each day in our fields and groves and their personal lives.

Robyn E. Blumner: For some defendants, an American gulag In Bernard Malamud's masterpiece The Fixer, inmate Yakov Bok was subjected to psychological torture in a Soviet gulag through the humiliations of constant shackling and repeated strip searches.